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I am citing the book Statistical Power Analysis for the behavioral sciences from pages 77 to 81. It seems @book in bibtex has no option for pages though. (I know I can use @inbook but if pages information is so necessary then why it is not included in @book?)

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    Have you tried using \cite[p.~77--81]{bookhandle}?
    – open water
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 4:45
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    The title asks if citing pages is necessary, the question rather focuses on how to include pages in bibtex - in case of which this question would be a better fit in LaTeX SE. Please clarify what you want to have answered.
    – Sursula
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 6:57
  • @Sursula Basically I want to ask if it is necessary to include pages, for I don't want to waste too much time on bibtex if it is unnecessary.
    – user900476
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 12:45
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    Oh I love it when I read "The claim now follows from [8]" in a math paper, while the authors actually mean "The claim now follows from a minor modification of Theorem 4.2.5 in the 600 pages book [8]. One just has to be careful that our space can be infinite dimensional, while it is assumed to be finite dimensional in the cited theorem - but we only use conclusion (iv) of the theorem, and a quick look at the three pages proof and the two preceding propositions (along with an easy application of Zorn's lemma) shows that (iv) also holds in infinite dimensions."
    – Jochen Glueck
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 19:41
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    I agree with the comment of @JochenGlueck, but I'd add that I'm also unhappy about "the claim now follows from [8]" even if all the relevant information is explicitly and succinctly stated in the book [8]. The author ought to tell me where in [8] to look --- a page number, a section number, or a theorem number. I'm not going to search the whole book.
    – Andreas Blass
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 2:22

1 Answer 1

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Citing pages is rarely needed and better avoided in most cases, because page numbers may vary through book’s editions or even for reprints of the same edition.

You can cite the book section in the text, specifying the book edition in the bibliography. In LaTeX you can do this with

\cite[section~X]{Book}

And possibly check the publisher's style guide whether they want section capitalized or not.

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  • Great answer, but I suggest to use a capital S in "section".
    – Federico Poloni
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 8:04
  • @FedericoPoloni It depends on the journal style: some journals (chiefly British) do not capitalize section, chapter. So, I leave to the reader the capitalization according to the journal style (I'll edit to specify). Personally, I find texts more readable with less capitals ;-)
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 9:20
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    American English is really obsessed with capital letters to make everything BIG
    – Herman Toothrot
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 9:47
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    Instead of "section X," you could use \S X (in LaTeX).
    – JRN
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 14:16
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    @JoelReyesNoche I used to use that paragraph symbol in the past, but I discovered that many people is not familiar with that and asked about the meaning. So, since then, I prefer to write section in full. I think it's a pity because in the long run this cause an impoverishment of the symbols and the language.
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Commented Jan 25, 2022 at 14:25

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